turned on my pride & joy this evening, she started up ok. i'm talking about my pc just in case i need to clarify..

All was ok, including the new gig of ram i just installed..

get into windows, program start to load into the system tray...wifi, pda, cam, a/v, hdd monitor, gfx...then zone alarm...which thwn crashed.

fair enough i think, click the dialogue box, then all hell broke loose, physical memory dump.

no matter what i do, it gets into the windows welcome screen, then tells me there is a problem and gives me BSOD.

Tried to recover the XP install from cd, but that wont have it and trying to re-install over the top....tells me the partition is too badly damaged and needs to be reformatted.....my poor 8gig mp3 collection and masters thesis...D'OH!!

so i'm hopefully going to be able to piggyback the data off tmr at work, but should the existing drive be ok after a reformat, and what could have caused it to go wrong so badly?

AARRGH! i can't keep using thia A5 notebook, way too fiddly.

Are you sure the new RAM is pushed home properly? I had a similar thing happen..new RAM then crashed bigtime. However after pushing the RAM fully in it came back.

I agree, ram problem. Try putting the original chip back, also if it was an additional stick, was it the same brand. I mixed 2 different brands and it kept crashing, till I took one out.

This won't help you to recover your mp3's or thesis, but may reduce the risk of losing data in future:

When (if) you reformat the disk, split it into two partitions (don't know how to do that in Windows; I use "fdisk" or "cfdisk" in Linux). Put Windows on one, and use the other for data which you want to keep. Then, if you have to reinstall Windows, you won't have to reformat the "data" partition.

deffinately a RAM problem, the physical "memory" dump gives the biggest clues...

Take the memory out and put the original stuff back in, you may have corrupted a few system files with the machine going pete but a good safe boot to run a check disk should see you ok. only thing that worries me is the attempts to reinstall windows and recover windows that you've done, you may have foobard it further by doing that.

thing is if the machine works fine before you change something then it can only be the thing you changed that screwing things...

Well i thought the ram seating was an issue too, but I did immediately check that...no change. :thumbdwn:

Then i put the old 768Mb back in and replaced the FSB jumper....no change.

I'm putting my musty old fiver on Zone Alarm screwing things up.

I've had issues with it taking out machines before, and given that the Memory check at boot up runs fine, all the boot up into windows works a.OK, and only when Zone alarm kicked in (two mins into an operational system) did things go wrong, I'm not sure.

Of course, it could be that windows itself wasn't too keen on the sudden change in RAM...wouldn't put it past it, unlikely as it is.

Now i'm at work, with FIVE PC's filing my desk (Work PC, Mini-ITX Linux project, two Optiplex's C/O Colin and my monstrous beasty)

Slipped the HDD into a caddy and it's unreadable/corrupted beyond help. :eek:

SO................

i'm running Bad Copy Pro to recover as much data as possible. So far it's recovered 800 files (I only asked it to pull DOC, XLS, JPG, WAV and MP3) . This software was the best

Gutted.. Backups on home systems are reguarly overlooked

im trying to decide what i can do to backup my data @ home... ive got a dds4 drive, but what use is 30gb to a tape when theres over a tb of data to backup :eek:

this isnt good considering that 1/3 that storage space are on IBM deathstar drives

I find backups are a pain in the butt, there is a an alternative though, just use an external hard drive, firewire or usb, even a 200gb disk is quite cheap now days and just backup everything important once a week or when ever convenient. I'm not sure I could sleep at night without knowing my data is safe. As a rule never assume your computer is going to work the next day (without being paranoid). :P

My guess is the HD got corrupted on the 1st boot with the duff ram, made worse by the dump writing data to the HD. Can you not recover the MP3's. I have 60GB backuped up onto DVDR.

Neo - IBM Deathstar..... . How did you guess??

I had a Quantum Fireball a few weeks ago from a salvage job - never seen a more appropriate name. First power up and the IC card blew a chip with a fluff of flame and smoke.....

To years ago when i built this system, it was to replace a 4 year old dell where the Fujitsu HDD had crashed, refused to boot from it at all, but data was still readable.

However, back to this system.

I have a secondary HDD (Samsung Spinpoint, 10GB) which i backed up key astuff oto about 6 six weeks ago. Of course, in that time, I've done some major assignments, which althought not necessary to keep, I like to for future reference.

Some stuff like Motorshow pics from two years back, poetry and self-penned songs about the past etc are purely of sentimental value.

the day-to-day tuff i do have paper copies of as i worked on that for a few weeks at a time, then transfered to electronic, printed off again and carry on etc.

Question is, what did i not include in the backup? hmmmm...

I'm toying with the idea of just formatting an starting again, using the backup on secondary drive and piecing it together from there. The MP3's are stuffed over a dozen CD's as well, so not to worry about that.

I think i might invest in a USB2 or firewire external HDD as well.....nothing llike belt and braces.......

If you're able to put in another HD or partition, try a Linux-based recovery floppy (it's like a Dos boot up disk, only with more powerful command line tools). Tom's root disc is the favourite although I know that BG-Rescue, http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~giannone/rescue/current/, has NTFS (XP/NT file system) drivers pre-installed, which is great for a potential Linux newbie.

If you want to read a little background on its usage, look here http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7596&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.

Rich

Looks like there was an issue with the ram.

Fell over during copying XP setup files.....same

IRQL_NOT_EQUAL" gubbins........

So, against my better judgement, i pulled the plug again, and swapped the ram sticks from slot 1 & 2 into 2 & 3. I didn't want to do this as No.3 is missing one of those little plastic stays....

However, No.2 did just move a micron further into the slot this time.

Gingerly started again, and it's been faultless for the last hour. I even recovered the bulk of my data from the back up - ok, it's from March of this year, but I won't have lost too much - most of the work since then has been voluntary one off stuff. text data mainly.

But i've split it into 2 partitions, pluss the 10Gb as another. And i'm going to buy a USB2.0 card and external drive as well.

Thanks to all for advice and guidance.

Joe

As a supposed backup "expert" I have to agree with all that's been said on here. The number of home machines (and more than a few office machines!) that I've been asked to look at with stuffed hard drives, where there's no backup of anything, is just terrifying.

I used to use a DDS2 drive, but it was a slow old thing, so I tend to back up the important stuff (photos and MP3's) onto DVD, and I take a Ghost copy of my c: drive every now and then, so I can get it back quickly in the event of a failure.

I've got my eye on a DLT7000 drive, though.....

Phil

I take a Ghost copy of my c: drive every now and then' date='

Phil[/quote']

Stupid question but how is this done ?

Use Norton Ghost? I know i know, that's not terribly helpful.....

Stupid question but how is this done ?

See here. http://www.symantec.com/region/reg_eu/product/ng_index.html No doubt others will advise on alternatives.